


You Were a Kindness

by DaniofLocksley



Series: Praimfaya [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bellamy is bad at coping, F/M, So much angst, and how he tries to remember Clarke, another praimfaya fic I know, continuation of my other song fic, time on the ring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-03-06 17:37:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13416237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaniofLocksley/pseuds/DaniofLocksley
Summary: Her face was a blurred watercolor, memories of her slipped through his hands. How could he have forgotten in such a short amount of time?'You made a slow disaster out of me





	You Were a Kindness

**Author's Note:**

> This is a continuation of another songfic that you don't have to read to understand this one. It's angsty times with Bellamy on the ring and how I imagine him not coping. Because let's face it our babe can brood. I never intended to continue my other one shot as I don't normally do song fics but this fit too well and my fingers itched to write this. Any feedback or comments are welcome! The song is You Were a Kindness by the National.

The day Raven gave him her pack from the shuttle they didn’t say a word about it. The rough material housed all that was left of her, and he couldn’t bring himself to make a sound. Stone-faced he brought it to his cabin and left it at the foot of his bed.

He’d think about it later.

Breakdowns were commonplace on the ring, one after the other they all experienced them. Bellamy’s was the last, he blamed Monty and his choice of music.

They all had different ways of coping with it, Emori and Murphy went at it like rabbits, Monty delved further into the ships mainframe, and Harper trained as hard as she could. They used whatever they could to escape the truth of what awaited them in a few years, what they had left behind. After Bellamy had his he refused to acknowledge it, just continued to push for their survival. Echo approached him for her comfort as well as his but he couldn’t do it, he pretended he didn’t see the hurt in her eyes when she left. He pulled more shifts than anyone else, no matter how they tried to evenly distribute the work. They stopped trying after a year, he had things that he needed to bury and surviving was how he chose to do so.

His eyes were always clouded, the brokenness never quite leaving them. 

 

_I was in a fog, I didn't notice everything everything_  
_Was coming all apart inside of me_  
_There wasn't anyway for anyone to settle in_  
_You made a slow disaster out of me_  


The pack at the foot of his bed gathered dust, untouched as they made it to year two. A nasty cold started up on the ring and it nearly destroyed them. Recycled air passed the illness from one crew member to the next and they struggled to keep afloat. Bellamy worked even harder through the weakness, taking over the farms when Monty couldn’t get out of bed, constantly monitoring the weather for asteroids. It came as no surprise when he managed to run himself down until he couldn’t move due to the fever he’d built up. 

_There's a radiant darkness upon us_  
_But I don't want you to worry_  
_I was careful but nothing is harmless_  
_Baby you better hurry_  


Echo did her best with what little she knew about medicine from Azgeda healers and Monty used the mainframe to pull as much information on the medicine they had available as possible. There wasn’t much they could do but wait. He slept for two weeks, face waxen and pale, freckles in stark contrast to his skin and the dark circles that bruised his eyes. Occasionally he came to and mumbled a name, but they silently agreed not to mention it.

_You were a kindness when I was a stranger_  
_But I wouldn't ask for what I didn't need_  
_Everything's weird and we're always in danger_  
_Why would you shatter somebody like me_  


Visions of Clarke surrounded him as he came in and out of consciousness. Sometimes he saw her in front of his bunk, on the ring. He couldn’t think of why but he knew that wasn’t right. It didn’t make sense. He chose not to question it.

More often than not he saw her in his dreams. They were back at the Dropship everyone was around the fire, laughing. The light from the flames flickered across her face, that small smile he had first despised firmly in place.

Jasper laughed loudly nearby and nearly spilled his moonshine all over her causing her to open her mouth and let out a loud laugh. The kind he couldn’t remember hearing while they were at the Dropship.

No sound came out.

Everyone around the fire laughed and he could hear them perfectly fine but no sound came from Clarke. Panic rose in his chest and he struggled to hear her, and then the dream shifted.

He spent hours staring at her, memorizing her. Two weeks of dreaming of her and he spent most of it staring at her in a field. The sky was blue the tall grass was green and they lay on their backs staring up at the sky.

Well, Clarke stared at the sky, he stared at her. Every once in awhile she’d cast a sideways glance at him and smile slightly before going back to finding shapes in the white fluff above them. They spent so long staring down and now she was staring back up.

They didn’t speak. He mapped the constellation of freckles on her forearms, memorized every dimple in silence.

Finally she turned on her side to stare back, lashes brushing her cheek as she stretched lazily and settled her elbow beneath her head. He wondered what she was thinking as her gaze brushed across his face gently glancing back to meet his eyes every once in awhile.

Golden hair gleamed in the sun and a breeze rustled the tall grass pulling a strand of hair in front of her face. Reaching across the space between them he brushed it back off of her before settling his hand on her cheek.

The sky darkened as he brushed his thumb across her cheekbones and she began to fade. Blurring at the edges like the time he spilled water on one of her drawings at the mess hall while they were deep in conversation.

Eyes wide they clutched at one another but he couldn’t speak and she opened her mouth but no sound emerged.

He clung to her desperately trying to understand what she was saying as she faded and the world around them blurred with her.

_It doesn't work that way_  
_Wanting not to want you won't make it so_  
_It doesn't work that way_  
_Don't leave me here alone_  


When he pulled out of the fever dreams tangled in his damp sheets he was still reaching for her, her name on his lips. It had been touch and go for the last week of his recovery, no one knew if he would pull through. 

Weak though he was he scrambled to the edge of the bed for her pack. He nearly toppling off in his haste to snatch the bag if not for Murphy stopping him from tumbling forward. Swirls of dust erupted from the rough cloth causing him to double over coughing but refusing to let go of the pack. The lines of her face were still blurred in his mind, how could he forget what she looked like in just two years? What did she sound like?

He could hardly remember.

Memories of Clarke were faint watercolors, vibrant but without a sense of real definition anymore.

“I can’t remember her.”, he rasped and the room grew still.

Clutching her pack to his chest he curled around it and fell back into a less fitful sleep, all energy gone once again. Echo stood nearby, she had been there through every nightmare, every slowing of his breath. She wanted to feel relieved that he was out of the woods but seeing him there, broken, clutching a backpack for dear life, she couldn’t find it in herself to feel anything other than sorrow. Sorrow for him, for Wanheda, and for herself because he would never see her while the memory of Skaikru’s princess remained.

He would always belong to her. 

_I'll do what I can to be a confident wreck_  
_Can't feel this way forever I mean_  
_There wasn't anyway for anyone to settle in_  
_You made a slow disaster out of me_  


Waking was easier the second time. Someone had removed the sheets from their twisted knots around his legs and the air felt cooler, less stifling. The backpack lay next to him, within reach, one of the straps still trapped in his outstretched hand.

He couldn’t remember her.

When they had first arrived he was constantly turning thinking he had heard her voice around the corner or seen a glimpse of blond hair only to be disappointed. Forgetting her would have been a blessing then, he saw her everywhere, heard her voice while he was awake and asleep. Now he was grasping at all he could to keep her memory preserved. He owed this to her, to remember her, she was too important to forget. 

_There's a radiant darkness upon us_  
_But I don't want you to worry_  
_I was careful but nothing is harmless_  
_Baby you better hurry_  


Dust swirled through the air choking him once more as he lifted the roughly textured flap of the knapsack. It would hurt, whatever he found in the bag would hurt him immeasurably, but he had to remember. He owed her this.

He owed himself this.

The first thing that lay at the top of the bag was a worn down shirt, soft from overuse. It smelled like Earth, and the medicinal pouches Clarke kept on her at all times. It smelled like home and her and that alone nearly stopped him from continuing on his investigation of the bag's contents.

Throat burning he set the shirt to the side for the time being along with the sparse selection of clothes that followed. He yelped when his finger caught on something. Withdrawing the appendage to suck on he reached in to grab whatever it was that had stabbed him. It turned out to be one of Finn’s metal animals, how she had kept track of it for so long he didn’t know. It went into the pile of clothing.

She had various bags of seeds and dried medicinal plants scattered throughout the bag along with a wealth of bandages. The seeds would be useful, they could grow new plant cultures and return with them when the earth was habitable again. He huffed out a bitter laugh at his findings. Leave it to Clarke to think so far into the future about what they might need. Some days he had trouble planning for the next day, much less years in advance, but she had always had a talent for foreseeing the unforeseeable. She must have been a hell of a chess player, they’d never gotten to play, so he couldn’t know for sure. 

_You were a kindness when I was a stranger_  
_But I wouldn't ask for what I didn't need_  
_Everything's weird and we're always in danger_  
_Why would you shatter somebody like me_  


When he reached the bottom of the pack all that was left was a leather-bound notebook, the one she had had with her since they landed. Once he had asked her what was in it, how did she fill the precious pages of paper knowing there was nothing to replace it. He couldn’t imagine anything he would have to write that would be important enough to deface the thick parchment.

She had huffed a small laugh at that, “The important things, things that deserve to be remembered.”

He wished he could remember what it had sounded like, the memory was blurred now, the sound distorted with time.

The binding of the notebook was worn down, scratched, and beat up from its time on the ground as well as whatever it had been through before reaching Clarke. Gently he opened the binding, stars she had had such terrible handwriting, how could he have forgotten that? Chicken scratch covered the first few pages as she detailed her father’s arrest and her time in solitary. That he saved for later and continued to flip through pages, drawings were interspersed throughout the chicken scratch, a leaf here, the Dropship, she had even attached the map to Mount Weather they were given when they first landed.

The portrait of Charlotte caught him off guard. It had been so long since he had thought of her, his first mistake on Earth had been failing to protect her. A portrait of Wells followed, sometimes at night when they camped on a trip he could hear Clarke mumble his name in her sleep. His death had broken her in a way her father’s hadn’t, it made everything they faced next so real. Part of Bellamy wished he had gotten to know Wells, he regretted his initial hostility. Wells had been a part of Clarke and part of her died with him.

She had drawn everyone from Mount Weather on one page, every face she could remember, everyone they had killed.

Because it hadn’t just been her. It had been them. Monty, Clarke, and Bellamy had all decided the fate of the mountain people that day. Clarke just chose to bare it for them.

What surprised him were the drawing that came next, large freckled hands took up one page, the next showed collar bones and strong shoulders. Who would warrant so many pages wasted to drawing them?

The third page focused on whoever the subject’s smile, upturned more in one corner than the other and dimpled just the slightest. On the fourth Clarke had put the pieces together, it was Bellamy the day she had returned to camp after disappearing. She had taken great care to show every detail from the crinkles in the corner of his eyes to the last freckle.

If anyone in the ring heard the sob that ripped its way from his chest at what he found they ignored it.

Clutching the journal to his chest he held a hand over his mouth to quell the sound. There was more, he wasn’t done. Later on he could break down but for now he needed this.

He needed her.  


The pages blurred before his eyes as he made another attempt to peruse the journal. Hastily he scrubbed at his face, not wanting to soak the pages and ruin what little he had left of her. There were pages of sketches of him, one of her mother, one of what he could only assume was her father as he had never seen the man before and he didn’t look like a grounder. Toward the back he finally found a self-portrait.

Her jaw was set in a stubborn line, mouth tilted ever so slightly on the side where her mole resided just above her lip. It wasn’t as detailed as the one she had done of him but it soothed something deep within him to see her again even if in the form of a practice sketch.

Monty found him hours later covered in graphite smudges up his arms with a nub of a pencil clasped in his fist. The walls were littered with bits and pieces of her. Clarke gazed out at Bellamy’s room from several angles. None of the drawings were as well done as hers, they were rough in nature, but it was undeniably her. The most painful to look at was above his bed, she wore the radiation suit they had last seen her in, body half turned to wave goodbye, it was Bellamy’s last memory of her.

“Murphy mentioned what you said when you woke up, about not being able to remember. I uh..”, Monty had to clear his throat before he could continue, “ It got me thinking, I don’t want to forget Jasper, I don’t want to forget any of them. So I started a side project, I’ve been looking through the archives of the ship, for recordings, pictures, anything I can find. There are a hundred years of data to sort through but I found a clip, of her, if you’re ready?”

Monty patted him on the back as he pushed off from his place on the door frame and left for the control center once more.

_It doesn't work that way_  
_Wanting not to want you won't make it so_  
_It doesn't work that way_  
_Don't leave me here alone_  


It hurt.

A stinging pain spread through his chest at the thought of hearing her again, watching her move. He would never be ready for that, not with the knowledge that she would never do so again. Not with the knowledge that it should have been him.

That was the crux of it, wasn’t it? Bellamy wished it had been him. Why had he let her go? Clarke deserved better than the end she got and it felt wrong to be here when she couldn’t be.

No, he would never be ready to watch the clip Monty had found or any subsequent memories he could dig up from the mainframe. He would watch them though. If it hollowed him out in the process he didn’t care, she couldn’t be forgotten.

So every day from that point until they waited to launch back into Earth’s atmosphere he watched the clips Monty found. He covered his room with memories. The journal grew worn at the edges from how often he thumbed through it.

Maybe part of him hoped that if he kept her firmly enough in his mind he could conjure her back into existence. Even if he knew it was impossible.

Strapping into the shuttle again this time to return home he tucked her journal into the front of his jumpsuit. Clarke Griffin wouldn’t be forgotten, he would make sure of that. Bellamy would ensure she lived on even if she only did so through memories. After all she was one of the important things, the ones that deserved to be remembered as she had put it.


End file.
